The Power of Words

You said that talking to people online is but a distant form of communication and relationship - that it would be near impossible to really know a person just by talking online. Perhaps there is more truth to be found in real contact - mannerisms, appearances, the little subconscious signals the human makes that he or she will never notice but will never escape your gleaming eyes. The online, I suppose, is but a farce; a makeup of the soul and brain.

You don't realize that sometimes, talking is all we have. And online is all we have. Not everyone has the luxury of physical contact, the knowledge of when your friends will be available to meetup, let alone the choice to meet them tomorrow to catch up over a cup of coffee. The doctor-to-be in Australia came back for a week in December - the previous time was July, and the one before over a year back. He's freer next year because it's his research year, but what after? Back to the rural hospitals with minimal access to the outside world? The looming thought of marriage to his highly conservative girlfriend? The realization that the only time I will ever get to meet him again is with a $800 air ticket and a prayer for him to have good fortune not to encounter too many of the dying?

For some, even contact is a privilege an honour we are undeserving of. But I digress.

There are those who get close and then start talking to each other online very often. I'm the opposite in cause and effect. As far back as I can remember every single friendship I've forged across the past decade that has lasted the test of time has started from talking online; it is the cause, not the effect. There are those who can't bother with farces, illusions, the makeup of the self and soul, who speak their mind without hindrance, who bare their self without fear. I trust them to take it, and they trust me to receive likewise. Of course trusting in a person and being trusted by a person are completely different matters - no doubt I fall completely guilty of mistaking this - but it works.

What difference is it, after all? The difference between talking with a person through a monitor and talking to a monitor is merely the trust that the person on the other side is truly a person - no robot, no fake, no pretending. When you don't bother with these things communication might get complicated - misinterpretations, misunderstandings. But you adjust and learn, and trust that this is the person behind the words, the person in the personality. Nothing clears up a misunderstanding faster than frankness and questions.

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I'm at the stage where I can only write incoherent writing without proper linking between everything and conclusions. I blame 3am writing without the alcohol.